Among the influences which Governments employ in dealing with each other there are two which are pre-eminent and antagonistic—force and persuasion. Force speaks with firmness and acts through the ultimatum; persuasion employs argument, courts investigation, and depends upon negotiation. Force represents the old system—the system that must pass away; persuasion represents the new system—the system that has been growing, all too slowly, it is true, but growing for 1,900 years. In the old system war is the chief cornerstone—war, which at its best is little better than war at its worst; the new system contemplates a universal brotherhood established through the uplifting power of example.
If I correctly interpret the note to Germany, it conforms to the standards of the old system rather than to the rules of the new, and I cheerfully admit that it is abundantly supported by precedents—precedents written in characters of blood upon almost every page of human history. Austria furnishes the most recent precedent; it was Austria's firmness that dictated the ultimatum against Serbia, which set the world at war.
Every ruler now participating in this unparalleled conflict has proclaimed his desire for peace and denied responsibility for the war, and it is only charitable that we should credit all of them with good faith. They desired peace, but they sought it according to the rules of the old system. They believed that firmness would give the best assurance of the maintenance of peace, and, faithfully following precedent, they went so near the fire that they were, one after another, sucked into the contest.
Never before have the frightful follies of this fatal system been so clearly revealed as now. The most civilized and enlightened—aye, the most Christian—of the nations of Europe are grappling with each other as if in a death struggle. They are sacrificing the best and bravest of their sons on the battlefield; they are converting their gardens into cemeteries and their homes into houses of mourning; they are taxing the wealth of today and laying a burden of debt on the toil of the future; they have filled the air with thunderbolts more deadly than those of Jove, and they have multiplied the perils of the deep.
Adding fresh fuel to the flame of hate, they have daily devised new horrors, until one side is endeavoring to drown noncombatant men, women, and children at sea, while the other side seeks to starve noncombatant men, women, and children on land. And they are so absorbed in alternate retaliations and in competitive cruelties that they seem, for the time being, blind to the rights of neutrals and deaf to the appeals of humanity. A tree is known by its fruit. The war in Europe is the ripened fruit of the old system.
This is what firmness, supported by force, has done in the Old World; shall we invite it to cross the Atlantic? Already the jingoes of our own country have caught the rabies from the dogs of war; shall the opponents of organized slaughter be silent while the disease spreads?
As an humble follower of the Prince of Peace, as a devoted believer in the prophecy that "they that take the sword shall perish with the sword," I beg to be counted among those who earnestly urge the adoption of a course in this matter which will leave no doubt of our Government's willingness to continue negotiations with Germany until an amicable understanding is reached, or at least until, the stress of war over, we can appeal from Philip drunk with carnage to Philip sobered by the memories of a historic friendship and by a recollection of the innumerable ties of kinship that bind the Fatherland to the United States.
Some nation must lead the world out of the black night of war into the light of that day when "swords shall be beaten into plowshares." Why not make that honor ours? Some day—why not now?—the nations will learn that enduring peace cannot be built upon fear—that good-will does not grow upon the stalks of violence. Some day the nations will place their trust in love, the weapon for which there is no shield; in love, that suffereth long and is kind; in love, that is not easily provoked, that beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things; in love, which, though despised as weakness by the worshippers of Mars, abideth when all else fails.
W.J. BRYAN.